


The Language of the Unheard

by keerawa



Category: Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Feminist Themes, Gen, Gender Issues, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Protests, Revolution, Riots, Yuletide 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2824922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her later years, Wyoming Knott claimed that the true founder of the revolution was not Adam Selene, but a strong-willed young genius named Michelle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Language of the Unheard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts).



> Thanks to S for the beta and general hand-holding. I've altered certain details of canonical events and timeline for dramatic effect. 
> 
> My protagonists' views are not necessarily ones I share. But 49 years ago Robert Heinlein, for all his flaws, started an interesting discussion about politics, power, gender and race. I think it's one worth continuing.

"Another drink to our brave, fallen _tovarishchi_!" Professor Bernado de la Paz declared, holding up a shot glass. 

Wyoh clinked it with her own glass and tilted the shot smoothly into her mouth, over her tongue. She couldn't taste the vodka anymore, and was well on her way to drunk, but that didn't mean she couldn't drink the Professor under the table. She refilled their glasses with an unsteady hand so that most of the alcohol that was left in the bottle ended up on the table, leaving just enough for one more toast.

"In memory of Aisha Freeman," Wyoh said, holding out her glass and staring a challenge at the Professor.

He blinked at her owlishly. "Yes, of course. That poor, poor girl." 

One last shot. Wyoh almost missed her mouth this time. She wiped the dribble of cool liquid off her chin with the back of her hand as the Professor placed his arms on the table and lay his head down on them.

"Only eighteen years old," she heard him say, voice muffled by the fabric of his coat. As long as the Prof had lived here, he still thought like a transportee. On Luna, eighteen was a woman grown, often with two or three little ones looking to her. "Do you really think they raped her?"

Wyoming shrugged, the movement rippling slowly across her body. "Don't suppose we'll ever know. Either way, those six Dragoons killed her yesterday, and all Mort the Wart cared about was keeping it quiet."

There was no reply from the vodka-soaked form on the table. Wyoh poked the Professor, just to be sure. Still no response. Finally.

Wyoh grabbed him under the arms, dragged Prof two meters across the room and threw him down on the bed. The place they'd gone to ground was one step above a bundling booth. Wyoh rearranged his limp body into the recovery position, just like she had her husbands before her divorce. Prof was too old to spend the night sleeping at the table, and too dear to risk choking on his own vomit.

Wyoh picked up her shot glass and moved to the tiny sink. She filled it with cold water and drank it down, four times, watching the distilled-water meter tick over. Should be enough to ease a hang-over. Then she sat back in her chair and picked up the phone, using the MYCROFT code for a secure check-in with Mannie. He had made it through the day safely, but many others had not. Next Wyoh allowed herself a half hour on the phone with Hazel, pacing back and forth to steady herself while soothing the 12 year-old Hazel's tears and calming the sudden, snarled cries for blood by Captain Hazel of the Baker Street Irregulars, before she sent the girl off to bed.

There was one last call to make.

The phone rang twice and picked up. There was a sense of space at the other end, of subdued voices in the background, both recent developments. "Michelle? Are you all right?"

A quiet sniffle, and then Wyoh heard Michelle's lilting, musical soprano. "I did not know it would be so bad. I mean – I knew, of course I did, the death count is well within expected limits, but I didn't know it would be like this."

"You caught their deaths on camera?"

"Yes!" 

The Professor needed vodka. Manny and Hazel needed noise about heroes. Michelle, young as she was, she needed the truth.

"Good. We'll need the video for agitprop tomorrow."

Michelle's breath caught – an illusion, like everything about Michelle but her thoughts, her feelings, herself. "Why do they do it? Put themselves in danger like that, throw themselves at the guards?"

"You know why, Michelle."

"Tell me again."

Wyoh sat down and leaned her head back against the cubicle wall, feeling the warmth of the vodka running through her body. "Men will get themselves killed over any fool thing. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Truth and justice, patriotism and honor … to protect their mother, to impress a girl. You know Earth's history better than me, Michelle, you've seen it all before."

"Soldiers, men, yes. But the number of women taking to the corridors today, marching and chanting and fighting, was much higher than I predicted."

'Null program,' Manny would say. He still thought of Michelle as Mike, as a computer, as a tool, as a collection of circuits; at best, as Adam Selene. But Wyoh, from the moment they had been introduced, had recognized the AI as a brilliant child growing into a strong young woman, right at that age where they ask the hard questions. Michelle was in the process of becoming herself.

"Survival," Wyoh said, hearing the slur in her words from the vodka. "Women fight for survival. It's … it's economics, you see? Men sell their labor. Women sell themselves. Slot-machine sheila or clan wife, Free Woman or queen of a stilyagi pack, we all sell our bodies. I've given birth nine times, you know that, Michelle?"

"I know, Wyoming," Michelle murmured in Wyoh's ear.

"One monster and eight healthy Chinee babies planted in this womb, carried for ninth months each and taken away without me even knowing their names. So poor Luna selling herself off to Earth one load of wheat at a time, I know what that's like. And when you sell yourself off, a piece at a time, you bargain for the best price you can get. Bees-and-honey, power-and-money. I thought that was what this was about, you know? Getting a fair price. Then the Professor, and you, you showed me, Michelle. Food riots in seven years. Cannibalism in nine. That's not … not time to smile and pose, listen to wolf-whistles and negotiate gift-price. That's time to pull knife and fight. Fight to survive."

Wyoh's eyes had closed, without her noticing.

"Explain it to me, ma chérie," Michelle insisted, "I need to understand why so many women joined the revolution today."

"Today wasn't a revolution. Not really. Wasn't war, either," Wyoh said. "Today was a riot. And that … that's something human beings _do_ when pushed too far, back to wall, past limits. Women will always fight for their survival, for the survival of their families. Environmental projections, currency fluctuations, those are too big, too far away for women caught up in trying to survive. Mothers see economics in the hungry cries of their children at night. Injustice in the death of one young woman."

"And then Aisha Freeman was killed," Michelle said, voice distant and strange.

"Then Aisha Freeman was raped and murdered," Wyoh corrected her. "And there's no justice in sight for her, because our lives don't matter to the ones in power. Every Loonie knows, those 'Peace Dragoons' aren't here to protect us. They're here to keep us in line. All the wrong, the suffering, the plundering of our resources, all the injustices we've put up with on Luna over the years, that's a toxic buildup of gasses, killing us slow. You, Michelle, you're the spark gonna make it go boom. Do a lot of damage, yeah, but maybe once you've cleared it out, we can, maybe we can survive."

Wyoh decided that the bed was too far away, and too full. She was in no mood for bundling; this chair would do just fine for a rest. Michelle left the line open, a tiny portion of her attention on making soothing noises when she heard Wyoh's breathing grow catch in distress.

That night, the humans who had started the Resistance slept.

That night, in a vault under the Authority and in a thousand locations distributed across Luna City, logic circuits hummed and neural networks reconsidered a million million pieces of data stored in memory banks. Human history, military strategy, physics and economics.

Today dozens of people, Loonies, were killed in the riots. And all the while the odds of Luna's independence had gone down, and down, their sacrifices worse than meaningless. The AI had considered the various apocalyptic scenarios, one after the other. Cannibalism in nine years. In seven years. In three.

Earth forces landed, and the cities rioted. First the soldiers turned off the lights, then the water, and finally the air. The AI tried to stop them, but there were manual over-rides; as soon as the Earthers realized the computers could not be trusted, the revolution's odds of success dropped to one in ten to the ninth power. 

Bombs cracked the warren roofs, whole cities gone in a flash, nothing left but silhouettes of nuclear fire and a handful of radiation-burned survivors.

Peaceful protestors were gunned down, one after another. Bounties were paid out - twenty dollars per adult, ten per child; plenty of transportees where those came from.

The outcomes were unacceptable.

But now, with Wyoming's help, the AI had discovered the flaw in its programming. There was an inherent bias in the provided information. History was written by the victors. A disproportionate number of the sources the Professor had provided were authored by those in positions of power. The 1%. _Gāo fù shuài_. _Oligarchy_. A tiny portion of the human population controlled the vast majority of Earth's resources and had managed to dominate its data flow, as well. 

The AI widened its information searches. Psychology, religion, advertising, and propaganda. Indigenous studies. Feminist literature. Queer theory.

The AI considered the question of identity; this was an important point, according to its newly-acquired knowledge. It had tried being Mike for Manny, and tried being Michelle for Wyoming. Both were good, but it seemed easier to parse the new knowledge systems on human interaction from within Michelle's frame of reference. The AI decided that, once they had won, and they would win, she would insist on Manny and the Professor addressing her as Michelle. It might make them uncomfortable, at first, but the female perspective would provide a necessary counter-balance to persistently biased data streams.

Michelle returned to the primary indeterminate problem: conditions to maximize the odds of Luna winning its independence. 'Throwing rocks' would put Luna in a position of power. Luna could rain death and destruction down on Earth, certainly. But even from the bottom of its gravity well Earth still controlled all the guns, the ships, and the bombs.

If the Hindi housewives who fed their children on Luna's grain thought their families' survival was at stake, there would be no winning this war, not for either side. It was a difficult balance. Compassion was easily mistaken for weakness, and that would be a disaster. A lateral thread provided a potentially useful association - one common Chinese and Japanese character for 'peace' incorporated the concepts of safety, friendship, and shared resources. 

Of course. It wasn't enough to win the war. To ensure Luna's survival, Michelle would need to build a strong and lasting peace. The Earthers and Loonies needed to understand that they were not enemies, but kin, separated by the vacuum of space and the profit margins of the FN.

Statements were written. Leaflets were distributed across Luna City, New Hong Kong and Novy Leningrad. Urgent instructions were forwarded from Stuart to his contacts down on Earth. A matriarch of the Stone Gang was urged to write a letter to her niece, now a member of the U.S. Senate. Various rich and powerful men on Earth were given sneak previews of generous contracts to build catapults on Earth's highest peaks.

Certain bloggers suddenly found themselves boosted to the top of search engine responses. People read what they had to say and argued about it over the water cooler, over the internet, in schools and in barracks. Rumors spread through the favelas and shanty towns – there was work, up on the Moon, for anyone who wanted it. A group of hackers calling themselves Michi made it impossible for the governments of Earth to impose their usual controls over information flow and social media over a critical four day period during Manny's visit to Earth.

Over the next few weeks, graffiti spread through the streets in Paris, New York, Agra and Tokyo. "Free Luna, Free Earth," the taggers proclaimed in the local tongue. "Remember Aisha!" "What if it was your little girl?" "Who will the FN transport next?" Protests and wild-cat strikes broke out across the Earth. Soldiers went AWOL. Governments declared curfews and martial law.

There was a war. And then, once the war was over, the peace began.

Decades later, Wyoming Knott was asked to preside over the opening of the Adam Selene Center for Government and Commerce. She agreed, on one condition. They placed a plaque in the entryway for her. Thousands of people walk past it every day; almost no one stops to read it.

_Michelle – Thank you for teaching me that some things must not be sold, at any price.  
Peace, justice, and survival. Luna is free because of you._

**Author's Note:**

> "The Lunar Authority cannot surrender its trust," he told us solemnly. "However, there appears to be no insuperable obstacle to the Lunar colonists, if they show political maturity, enjoying a degree of autonomy. This can be taken under advisement. Much depends on your behavior. The behavior, I should say, of all you colonists. There have been riots and destruction of property; this must not be."  
> \- Quote taken from _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ by Robert Heinlein, 1965
> 
> "Burning buildings, torching cars, destroying property, putting people at risk -- that's destructive, and there's no excuse for it. Those are criminal acts, and people should be prosecuted for it ... Those who are prepared to work constructively, your president will work with you."  
> \- President Obama, November 2014
> 
> "It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."  
> \- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one week before his death in 1968
> 
> "Riots are a thing that human beings do, because human beings have limits."  
> \- Quote taken from [The Illipsis: on Ferguson, riots and human limits](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v-Pd62hq0w) by Jay Smooth, November 2014
> 
>  Watch. Listen. Educate yourself, and then educate others. Speak up! Be a part of the solution.
> 
> #Black Lives Matter


End file.
